For Rick Caruso, the newly built home at 915 Kagawa Street is a bellwether of what is to come in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
"As we're coming up on the year anniversary, and people start feeling like they've been left behind and forgotten, this is really going to give a lot of people hope," Caruso, a real estate developer, said on Friday, standing in the home's second-story loft space.
It was the grand opening of what homebuilder Thomas James Homes and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass are calling the first rebuild in the neighborhood after the Palisades Fire destroyed thousands of homes valued at more than $17 billion in January.
If the event was any indication, though, it doesn't feel like the Palisades has been "left behind and forgotten." Friday's gathering, according to Thomas James Homes' team members, was an invite-only, intimate gathering. Even so, Caruso joined executives from the homebuilder, along with a handful of reporters and photographers, to celebrate the reveal of the newly completed home.
And on Saturday, the homebuilder expects some 200-plus residents to descend on the property for a community event, according to Jeffrey Sandorf, vice president of sales for the firm's Southern California division and a fourth-generation Palisadian.
"The goal is to bring what the Palisades is about — family and life — inside where the outside environment is not really there yet," he told Homes.com in an interview.
Finding ways to speed up the permitting process
The home at 915 Kagawa officially received its certificate of occupancy, the final step in the build process, on Nov. 21 — just about six months after receiving a permit in April and starting construction in May. In fact, according to Mead, Friday's event marked exactly six months to the day since the home's foundation was poured.
It's important to note, however, that the homebuilder purchased the property in November 2024 and submitted its first plans for approval before the fires began.
Even so, that timeline stands in stark contrast to what other residents and builders in the Pacific Palisades have reported from their own experiences trying to rebuild. As of the end of October, it was taking an average of 82 days between submission and approval for rebuild permits, according to Pali Builds, a resident-run database tracking building in the Pacific Palisades.
Thomas James Homes argues that its internal processes and relationships with city officials help that process run more smoothly — and lead to faster build and completion timelines. Mead said Friday that the firm's average lag between permit submission and approval is just 60 days.
"This isn't entirely about a streamlined process. I think the city's really trying hard," he said. "It's about what you can do if you've got a professionalized approach to permitting."
Building new homes without community infrastructure
Permitting isn't the only hurdle facing Thomas James Homes — and others trying to rebuild in the Palisades.
For one, there's the basic differentiation between individual lots, each with its own specific layout and composition.
"Every house is individually challenged by something," Mead said. "Every house ... has its own unique circumstances."
But bigger picture, the Palisades is still in the early stages of recovery. Take the home at 915 Kagawa, for example.
Its new cerulean pool is encircled by vibrant green grass, but the sounds of construction echo through the yard. Its kitchen boasts Wolf appliances and a glistening marble countertop, but the scaffolding on the diagonal lot is visible through the window that sits above the kitchen sink. The primary suite features a navy-blue shiplap accent wall and big windows that welcome natural light, but the view is mostly barren lots and house frames.
More than that, the neighborhood hasn't fully recovered its infrastructure, either. A local coffee shop, Palisades Garden Cafe, is open. So is a CVS Pharmacy. However, the brunt of commercial real estate has yet to return, and most local schools are still closed, many reduced to nothing more than a pile of rubble and steel beams.
"Those things have got to come back," Mead said.
Without those, a sort of mismatch between resident demand to return has manifested, he explained. That said, Mead expects his firm to deliver the "bulk of their first houses" late next year and into 2027.
"We can build back quickly," he said, "but again, we don't want to put people in a house without a place to go for groceries."